Charley takes a turn for the worst - Patient Zero

This is one I’ve been building towards the entire time. It was part of my decision to go with Charley instead of Evelyn. Way back when I first started with Big Finish, one of the earliest serials I listened to was Five and Peri in Mission of the Viyrans. It stood out from all those from that drive by being really out there, and I really wanted to listen to the sequel. That made the decision to start on the Eighth Doctor a no brainer.

That this ended up finally moving the Mystery of Charley on rather significantly gave even more resonance to this serial.

It Was All Going So Well - Planet of the Daleks

I think I've figured out why Frontier in Space was included in the list of recommendations I built this whole enterprise out of. It’s counterpart isn’t that good.

In one aspect Planet of the Daleks is great. A return of Dalek vs Thal, with the other Skaro natives now from the future no less, with early space travel and trying to put a stop to a big Dalek plan. Clearly it’s another riff on the the original serial with a few tweaks here and there. Which can be done well. But the execution is pretty awful.

The One that Started it all - Genesis of the Daleks

Over the last wee while, my watching has been getting closer and closer to the blog deadline. Mostly thanks to new job and things like Netflix's Daredevil (which is awesome!). I was worried that at some point I'd fall behind. That's now happened. As I write this I'm a third of the way through Planet of the Daleks. Instead, I figured since he's been hard done by this run through, we'd go back to Tom Baker.

I’ve probably mentioned this in a few places by now, but Genesis of the Daleks was the first proper Classic Who I watched, and quite possibly the serial that started this whole thing rolling. This is simply because I didn’t like it.

There's a War Coming - Frontier in Space

I’m not sure what I expected here. I knew the next serial hinged on Frontier in Space. No one recommended it, so I figured a pretty shaky story just to get to some Dalek action. Instead we get a 70’s sci-fi version of 24, by which I mean lots of political intrigue, war brewing and some casual torture thrown around.

It’s utterly brilliant and unexpected.

Return to the Daleks - Terror Firma

And now we also return to the Eighth Doctor as he returns to the proper universe, and Big Finish do the only thing you can do to welcome back the Doctor. The same thing RTD did. You bring out the Daleks.

They have also decided to address a rather large elephant that has been in the room for seventeen years. Just how exactly are the Daleks about after Skaro was blown up in Remembrance of the Daleks?

Today is Gonna be the Day - Day of the Daleks

After my last run with Pertwee, I wasn't looking forward to his return. I made no apologies for the fact that I've enjoyed his stint the least so far. However, we did end on the high note of The Mind of Evil so I wasn't writing him totally off. Hopefully the return of the Daleks is a good sign too.

The plot makes a nice point of the problems of time travel, which is pretty surprising for Classic Who. In my dealings so far I've got the impression that it was practically ignored. Of the serials I've watched so far I can only think of City of Death that pulls something similar. Mostly time travel is a means to an end, a way of getting the Doctor to that particular story. Here, it's front and centre. Which might be one of the reasons it's so good.

Being Chased Through Time and Space - The Chase

After their resounding defeat during the Invasion of Earth, the Daleks have invented a time machine, and their first task is to find the Doctor and kill him for what he's done to them previously. It's an utterly fantastic idea.

The execution doesn't quite live up to it.

Once More into the Pepper Pot Breach - Dalek Empire 2

The second series takes the questionable decision of telling the story through flashbacks, I think possibly setting up Dalek Empire 3. But further than that it decides to go for flashbacks within flashbacks at quite a steady procession. It even has the audacity to have the overall framing so far in the future that they get the details of Dalek Empire 1 wrong as they view history.

However, it's probably for the better, because it allows the series to set up some rather nifty cliffhangers, suspense and mystery to proceedings because if it had just carried on as normal it would have been rather so-so, one of the problems Cyberman 1 would suffer greatly from. Though Part 4 does commit the second greatest crime of cliffhangers by not addressing Part 3's until 20 minutes in, mostly spending its time explaining the framing story and setting up “Dalek Empire 3”.

Obey the Daleks! - Dalek Empire

During Capaldi's first season I had a wedding to attend, which also meant two 8-10 hour train journeys. My classic tactic for this year with travel was to push on with Who Audio, but that wasn't really an option, as I'd promised myself I'd stay away from other Doctors until we'd finish the Twelfth's Doctors first tour of duty. So, despite how much Cyberman had put me off the Big Finish mini-series, I decided drag out Dalek Empire, being that it'd take up nearly five hours of my trip.

Initially it seems to be looking at how the 'Dalek Invasion of Earth' took place. Which is particularly obvious thanks to the title of part one being 'Invasion of the Daleks'. It would be quite a clever move too, as we know the Daleks reached Earth, but everything else about that invasion is a complete mystery. However, it is in a totally different timezone, the 42nd century to be exact, but Big Finish do seem to be addressing the fact that 'Dalek Invasion of Earth', the second ever Dalek serial, has the evil pepper pots acting in a very different manner than we saw after that.

There's liberal use of robomen, a process the Daleks didn't bother with for years after 'Invasion' until Moffat brought back the idea for humanised Dalek infiltrators. There's the forced labour camps, which modern day Daleks wouldn't bother with because the can just exterminate.
In many way it's a shame that it doesn't just embrace the Dalek invasion we saw the First Doctor deal with. After all, he only stopped one operation on Earth, there's got to be a lot more to that story.

Even more Daleks - Time of the Daleks

We're back with the Eighth Doctor as he and Charley arrive in the late-2050s as the Doctor investigates why Charley has no idea who Shakespeare is and discovers an annoying temporal anomaly. And Daleks.

Shakespeare is one of those historical people that seems so obvious for Doctor Who to visit. Which is probably why the show avoided it until the Tenth Doctor and Martha. Yet this one does a much better job because it plays up the tropes of Shakespeare so much more, and is more about a performance than the writer, and only plays that card after it's well and truly built up.

Save the Daleks! - The Mutant Phase

Despite listening to the first two Dalek entries relatively quickly I've been putting “The Mutant Phase” off as long as possible. Not because of Davidson. After I did his closing three stories I felt I could press on with his audio adventures. The reason for the hold up has been his companion. Nyssa is one of those that I have no knowledge of. I've only seen her in “Earthshock”, which she might as well not have been in. I was trying to hold out till I watched the Four/Five regeneration trilogy, and two more on my list that would have taken me up to “Earthshock”.

But I have one goal before Capaldi begins (just to date this). Reach “Zagreus”, which I'm treating as the end of McGann season 1. To do that means listening to “Time of the Daleks”, which I've seen lumped in with “The Genocide Machine”, “The Apocalypse Element” and “The Mutant Phase” as Dalek Empire Season 0.

I'm not entirely sure how relevant that is, except they seem to be Big Finish's first Dalek stories for each Doctor. I first noted that “The Apocalypse Element” had barely anything to do with “The Genocide Machine” except its antagonists, and the same is true of “The Mutant Phase”. I figured it may have been building to something with the epic ending of “The Apocalypse Element”, but “The Mutant Phase” does something else entirely.

Destiny of the Daleks part 2 - the actual episodes

I said before, we're back with Tom Baker. Despite Baker generally being regarded as the best of the old Doctors, I can't quite get behind it. But more immediately, it's bloody weird jumping from mid Pertwee to late Baker, a very big difference in style. Not just in that the TARDIS is working again, but the Doctor and Romana are very different to the Doctor and Jo, in fact the roles are almost reversed.

We already covered the Regeneration and how she stands in Doctor Who. It's that last part I mentioned, the 'she's his equal' that really comes into play for the rest of the episode.

Oh, the episode. It's alright, I guess. Pretty sub-standard Dalek affair.

Into the Dalek - the Dark Doctor

It’d be easy to look at 'Into The Dalek' and think “Oh, a new Doctor, radically different to any since the restart, let’s keep them watching by bringing out the Daleks. Everyone loves the Daleks.” Yet it’s decidedly cleverer than that. We’ve already seen that this is a new Doctor trying to figure out exactly who he is. Who better to find that out against, than his greatest enemy?

This is the enemy who Davison picked up a gun against without even thinking. That Tom Baker nearly wiped out as they were created. That Sylvester McCoy did something massive about, like maybe blowing up their planet, I think, I still haven’t watched Revelation of the Daleks.

The Daleks bring out the worst in the Doctor, so who better than Twelve to have his identity crisis with than the one enemy who will show him how bad he can be? And for a Doctor who is struggling to figure out just who he is, we do see his terrible decision-making when it comes to Daleks. While he doubted it would work, he really hoped that he could save Rusty, but on learning that the only thing that had made Rusty ‘good’ was radiation poisoning, he gave up at the fact all Daleks are evil, and he was right all along. It takes Clara to knock him back on course, just like she did at the Moment, to get on with things and actually think of another way.

Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth

Being as the version I watched featured a 'Dalek Invasion of Earth' title card complete with appearing text and wobbly flying saucers that looked straight out of a b-movie I figured this might just be the hokey type of 60s sci-fi I promised myself I wouldn't let bother me. The Daleks flying saucers see their introduction here, and to say they're hokey is an understatement. Obviously I'm used to the design now, having seen numerous redesigns to make them look better. But here they are at their worst. The first shot of them is bobbing along on a string, and it brings to mind every joke about old science fiction ever made.

However, apart from the spaceships and a monster that appears for ten minutes in the closing parts, this isn't that hokey a story at all. In fact it's fairly horrific, with a pretty damn high body count and tension filled street chases. Not to mention the rather strong imagery of Daleks patrolling around London. I mean the opening shot of the entire serial is a man staggering alone, screaming, and then drowning himself in a river in front of a sign that says body dumping isn't allowed. Doctor Who isn't holding back on the darkness here.